First post, by VenomSpark
- Rank
- Newbie
Hi guyz 😀
im constantly working on one of my retro build, with highs and lows, despite i hope one day i could afford a better one as with this mobo i have some little issues, and most of them comes from the chip VIA Apollo 133A, which honestly and personally i really hate.. is a pain in the ass to try get AGP 4X and other troubles.
Anyway, my question is pretty simple, as before asking i tried to surf a lot the net and experiment myself, but with poor results so that's why i hope some of you could help me out.
I had a GeForce 5200FX, which worked surprising good under this system, with extreme good compatibility for MS DOS games, D3D and so on. But sadly, one day from nowhere she decide to die and now i can't use it anymore until i could afford a new one (not now, sadly) as it shows artifacts and graphics glitches already from boot screen. I have a lot of AGP cards, but most of them are ATI and despite been a huge ATI fan boy, it is not very good for me. They have very poor dos compatibility (Keen is one of my favourite and played games, and it have screen tearing, IKR there are patches but im too lazy and not always works) and so on, and also some D3D give me problems, while with Nvidia cards not.
So i try to get on the point of the question: I have as a temporary replacement a GeForce 2 MX-200 64MB AGP4X from 2001, don't know the manufacturer but I could tell you the initials written on the card. Anyway it would be a good card for me, it have nice MS DOS compatibility (VESA 2.0 if i remember), no Keen and other games glitches and so on, but i have HUGE problems with the drivers.
I tried A LOT of versions, but one give less errors but adds new one, and viceversa. In short, i cannot find a really good version that don't give ANY problems. I tried with range from 2002 drivers (23.xx) to 2004 (4x.xx) but no luck. Does anyone that have or had this card under Windows 98 SE, made it work without any problem and can raccomend me (if you link them would be more amazing) ?
With the FX5200 i used 43.49, or sort of it I don't remember the exactly number now but was 40.xx series from 2003, and they were PERFECT. But with same drivers and the GF2MX installed later, instead, didn't. Problems with almost 5-6 different versions of drivers i used, combined together are:
- Random freezing
- Graphical glitches on some games (IGI, GTA 1, Blood 2 ecc.)
- Freezing at startup right after Win98 opening music
- The area around the mouse have constantly graphic glitch, like lines and artefacts permanent when you move the mouse arrow
- Most, if not all, of them don't recognize AGP 4X but only 2X (this should be related to mobo ikr, but i remember one version made 4X work, but had problems)
- Sometimes i see screwed colored lines during Windows 98 boot loading screen, or during login for then disappear, or reappear randomly
- Black screen right after Windows 98 boot screen, totally freeze and no response
these are just few that i can remember now, so please there is a "magic" version that could really work as it should or like the FX5200 did?
The card works, i mean AFAIR it don't have any damage, it always worked 3-4 years ago on another pc, so it shouldn't be a problem related to the card.
I know messing with drivers is not a good idea, but i always did the right way during testing from one to other versions: used Driver Cleaner PRO, removed any .inf from windows, any registry key and so on. And trust me, is a pain in the ass and a lot of frustrating work.
Sorry for long post, but i would like to use my PC and my GF2MX without any above mentioned problems. I could tell you the exactly versions I tried with this card later (i have all of them on a folder, each one with the correct number of version) but any of them didn't gave me the hoped results. I think i even desperately tried the Detonator version, no luck. No one seems to like this card despite i remember with another old mobo (an ASUS A7V8X with AMD socket) never gave a problem and was working VERY good (it ran even Max Payne 2 and other 2003 games).
Oh, the specs if needed:
ASUS CUV4X-E with latest beta BIOS installed Socket 370, VIA Apollo 133A (bleah) and AGP 4X Pro (universal)
Intel Celeron 533Mhz Mendocino PPGA-370 (nothing is Overclocked)
128MB SDRAM PC133
S3 Savage4 GT 8MB AGP4X (works good and great in DOS, but very weak performance in almost any D3D games)
Sound Blaster LIVE! 5.1 PCI
Windows 98 SE Italian latest build, no service pack or other mods installed, just vanilla with DirectX 9.0c